Playing at the World: revised 2nd Edition in 2024

[archersix]

So I'm late to the party, but I finally got a copy of Playing at the World. I'm about 70 pages in so far, and it's a really good read. I'm loving how in depth Jon goes with everything. It's kind of like reading a text book, but in a subject you are very interested in.

[Finarvyn]

Very much agreed on this. I think that Jon put an incredible amount of work into the thing, it's full of footnotes, and has all sorts of great information inside. I wish I had access to all of the original docs that he got to see, but I'm glad that he was able to tell us about them.

[grodog]

Jon's working on a new edition for PatW, which will include much of the additional research compiled at his blog, as well as new discoveries. I'm definitely looking forward to it!

Allan.

[Finarvyn]

Kind of a bummer to have to buy a new copy, but in this case it will probably be worth it!

[archersix]

Huh! I got the dead tree version, but I'll be interested to see what's in the new edition.

[mrmanowar]

I have the book and will gladly get an updated one with the new info. I enjoy seeing what's unearthed and having a more complete picture of what was available and what was happening documented thoroughly. I can't recommend PatW highly enough and enthusiastically state that PatW is one book all people dedicated to learning about the origins/history of our games and hobby must have. It is an indispensable resource. Well done Jon, looking forward to seeing you at Gary Con!

[increment]

Um. I wouldn't hold my breath for a new edition of PatW. Inevitably, it is starting to show its age, given all that has come to light in the past five years. But some other projects of mine will surely come out before that. The only one that I'd speak to as an imminent release is the work I've been doing with Wizards and Ten Speed (a Random House label) on a "visual history" of D&D, spanning from the earliest days to the present. That's a project I've been pursing over the past couple years with Mike Witwer (of Empire of Imagination) and a few others. At the risk of plugging it, there is already an Amazon order page for it:

www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Definitive-Visual-History/dp/0399580948

[mrmanowar]

Excellent! Preorder placed! Keep up the great work!

[captainjapan]

Playing at the World 2nd edition vol. 1 has a release date. Paperback pre-orders begin on April 30th through M.I.T. Press. ( or, right now, through Amazon)

mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780262548779

There is now also a title for volume 2:

"The second volume is The Three Pillars of Role-Playing Games, a deeper dive into the history of the setting, system, and character of D & D."

Interesting. What are the three pillars, I wonder?

[geoffrey]

Feb 28, 2024 8:42:13 GMT -6 captainjapan said:

Playing at the World 2nd edition vol. 1 has a release date. Paperback pre-orders begin on April 30th through M.I.T. Press. ( or, right now, through Amazon)

mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780262548779

There is now also a title for volume 2:

"The second volume is The Three Pillars of Role-Playing Games, a deeper dive into the history of the setting, system, and character of D & D."

Interesting. What are the three pillars, I wonder?

Maybe the three pillars are:
1. setting
2. system
3. character

But probably not!

[captainjapan]

Feb 28, 2024 12:25:07 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Feb 28, 2024 8:42:13 GMT -6 captainjapan said:

Playing at the World 2nd edition vol. 1 has a release date. Paperback pre-orders begin on April 30th through M.I.T. Press. ( or, right now, through Amazon)

mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780262548779

There is now also a title for volume 2:


Interesting. What are the three pillars, I wonder?

Maybe the three pillars are:
1. setting
2. system
3. character

But probably not!

Hahahahahaha! omg, I am dense

[Zenopus]

Chapters 2-4 of the first edition of PatW are:

2: Setting - The Medieval Fantasy Genre
3: System - The Rules of the Game
4: Character - Roles and Immersion

[captainjapan]

The book has a cover. By Erol Otus!

[Zenopus]

Mar 10, 2024 21:00:35 GMT -6 captainjapan said:

The book has a cover. By Erol Otus!

Ooh, that is fantastic, perhaps my favorite Otus of the modern era. I've missed his black and white line work.

Thanks for keeping us updated on this captainjapan

[derv]

Reading the blurb on mit’s page makes me curious if all the revisions of the original text will be in volume 1 of the new edition.

Or, is this a major rewrite? It doesn’t sound like it is.

[Zenopus]

FWIW, on Twitter last fall, increment said it would be a "pretty pervasive update" & he planned to do a preview closer to the publication date.

[derv]

“Pervasive” is an interesting choice of words. I guess it’s an extensive change through out.

[DungeonDevil]

Schweet cover art!

[jamiltron]

Easy pre-order for me. I had always been interested in games history, but this book was one of the first to really set my brain on fire.

[DungeonDevil]

Any word about when vol. 2 will be released? I wonder if they will eventually offer a 2-volume set at a reduced price as an incentive. (I happen to fancy slipcased sets. *drool* )

[asaki]

Oh that cover is awesome.

[Zenopus]

The first volume of the revised Playing at the World is released in just two days!

Find the link here:
ZENOPUS ARCHIVES | Reminder: The first volume of the revised Playing at the World is out in two days!

There's also now a page up for the second volume, which indicates it will come out on April 5th, 2025.

[Finarvyn]

Amazon says my copy will arrive by 10 am tomorrow!

[verhaden]

My copy arrived today. It's been a while since I read the first edition, so I'm excited to delve into it.

[tetramorph]

I have and have thoroughly read the first edition.

Those who've picked up the second - any significant revisions that would merit my buying this new edition?

What have you noticed to be the chief additions/subtractions/alterations?

[Play_History]

Aug 11, 2024 12:18:49 GMT -6 tetramorph said:

I have and have thoroughly read the first edition.

Those who've picked up the second - any significant revisions that would merit my buying this new edition?

What have you noticed to be the chief additions/subtractions/alterations?

While admittedly I haven't read through the chunky tome in a while, this book is almost a complete rewrite. It's structured more like a biography than a scholarly study, getting a bit closer to the "on the ground" moments of the wargaming scene with Arneson and Gygax's place within it.

This volume is very focused on narrative as opposed to digging into things behind the systems which I recall the first edition having significantly more of. It incorporates many recent finds and additional fanzines to help smooth out the timeline. There is also a change in thesis which Jon has articulated over the years that the Twin Cities group was far from unique in grasping at the concept of "roleplaying."

In brief: There's more context to the story this time around, along with some revelations that do outdate the original. It comes off as a wholly different experience - not entirely self-contained but you are not nearly as compelled to know the influences outside of wargaming to get the context (because it's pushed to the next volume). Peterson has gone for much more of a "social history" this time around, to mixed results in my opinion. The info is still very much there and will give you a new way to look at the founding of D&D.

[Seeker/Digger]

Aug 11, 2024 12:18:49 GMT -6 tetramorph said:

I have and have thoroughly read the first edition.

Those who've picked up the second - any significant revisions that would merit my buying this new edition?

What have you noticed to be the chief additions/subtractions/alterations?

I haven't finished yet but I am a little over halfway through. I read the original in 2015 and haven't gone back for a full reread since, but have used it as a reference a few times.

It's definitely much more of a narrative history, like what aguyinarpg said. I think that getting more into the communities/cultures of play of the time period really benefits the book, especially using that as a human narrative to build around. I don't know if I could digest the first edition the way I did in high school when I had much more time and energy, but I actually enjoy the story Peterson is telling in addition to the history itself. This doesn't mean the second edition is less of a scholarly work, I think it's just going for a different style of history. 

You could say there's a bit more of a present authorial bias, but I think that it humanizes the story in an important way. It's not against anyone or anything in particular (beyond toxic behavior in the community), but it jumps into things like Dave and Garry's somewhat strained creative relationship rather than recounting events in a more clinical light.

I also liked that he jumps around in the timeline a little here and there. My memories of the first edition are of him going in sequential order through the early history, whereas in the second edition he'll pull from different time periods as they become relevant in the central narrative. You get the picture more of a hobby/industry/subculture (whatever you want to call it) that has changed a lot and very little at the same time.

Overall, I've really liked it so far. While the style is definitely different, it's got a ton of new information that's presented just as well or better than in the first edition.

[tetramorph]

Thanks, y’all. I’ll order a copy.

[gonyaulax]

Remember that this is an "incomplete" work: Volume 2 will be out next summer. Jon already gives references to Vol. 2 both in the text, notes and index.

I really enjoyed reading the current version. I will agree that it is much more of a narrative and I expect Vol. 2 to be more "nuts & bolts".

It's hard to wait . . .

In a month or so, I may end up re-reading the original again. I DEFINITELY won't be giving it away.

For what it's worth, I consider this to be "part and parcel" with his books "The Game Wizards" and "The Elusive Shift", both of which are well worth getting and reading if you've enjoyed "Playing at the World".

[Play_History]

Finished it up this week!



Time may be an enemy, but I didn't feel nearly as struck by 2E as I was the first time around. The reframing of the narrative I don't think brought things into focus nearly as well as Jon's blogposts have - it's a problem The Elusive Shift has as well. To me, the more scholarly attitude of the first edition and the extent of the coverage felt way more necessary to making this a complete work that gives you a new perspective.

It strikes me that the approach to describing the nuts and bolts of gameplay is rather flippant. I don't really get the sense from this edition how Blackmoor really influenced D&D beyond its theming. I know this was in the middle sections in the prior book, but lacking an examination of the Wizard Gaylord sheet I think makes the Blackmoor chapter woefully incomplete. I wasn't doing a complete side by side comparison, but it struck me that the focus was far more on the attitudes of wargamers rather than the play of the games up until we get into D&D in 1975. Not getting into game mechanics is the gaping hole at the core of this book for me that caused constant frustration in linking the pieces together. Chainmail gets the most discussion and I think some of the lines Jon tries to draw from it are a bit tenuous or not that interesting.

The start of the book has a much stronger lead into the new thesis, which I mentioned in my last comment. Again I think some of his examinations of these early "roleplaying" games were more effective on his blog but he sets the scene for them way better. I understand his points way more then when he info-dumped the Hyboria campaign in his wargames section. Some of the argument about the fantasy influences gets way more buried, diminishing some of the more interesting connections which I don't think should be left purely to the fantasy literature section. (I have been brushing up on my old fantasy recently including Moorcock, Vance, and Anderson.)

I did notice that some criticisms of his more speculative footnotes seem to have been corrected. I commented on his blog about the presumption that character levels were derived from the dungeon levels of Blackmoor, which was noted in the first edition and removed from this one. He has given a bit more credence to sources later than 1980, though he's still fairly rigid about only accepting things in print before the end of the 70s as informative.

The timeline of the book's deep coverage runs from 1965 to the end of 1976, which unfortunately leaves out some of the cool stuff at the end of the first edition. I'm particularly looking forward to his deeper examination of early digital RPGs, which he told me was a project he was working on. I do miss some of the examination of things like Adventure which are interesting in this context; plus that bit about the PLATO IV game The Dungeon makes me dead curious about what other reports exist in the fanzines.

I stand by a recommendation if you've read the first edition. I did do a few searches on the two ebooks sometimes and there's a remarkable amount of shared text, but the framing really does make all the difference. It's very much worth another read, especially if you're interested mostly in the early days of the D&D community.

I'm hoping there will be a much deeper examination of the primary sources in Three Pillars (which is Volume 2 of this book). I want breakdowns and speculations on the Strategos N character sheets, attempts at chronology for the Blackmoor dispatches, theorizing on the ambitions of The Great Kingdom, changes from Guidon D&D, and how the pre-publication variations (Greyhawk, Richard Snider Variant, Tonisborg) might have informed the end product. A man can dream - but I will 100% be picking it up for the new evolutions in that scholarship.